Everything that is
said, done, and decided about autism in Canada
enmeshes the lives of autistic Canadians. Daily, we
live practical and emotional consequences of having
our fate in the hands of non-autistic factions
quarreling over our treatment.

These factions, ABA
parents and governments, are indistinguishable in
their convictions about our place, worth, and rights
as autistics. For example, their refusal to consider
us as equals is identical. So is their adherence to
the premise that autistics are inherently doomed.
Where they superficially disagree is in the fine print
of how autistic differences must be removed from
society, and, more detectably, in who should pay for
this. The intensity of the resulting altercations
confirms the common observation that the most academic
differences are most obstinately defended. In areas
crucial to autistics, the opposing factions have
shaken hands in common cause. They would prefer a
world without autistic differences, and they do not
want autistics standing in the way of this goal.

Auton has
been and continues to be the most important and
representative of the profusion of
ABA-parent-versus-government legal disputes. The
behaviour, or misbehaviour, of the two factions in Auton,
and of the phalanxes of supporters amassed behind
each, has generated in Canada a climate in which
autism, like cancer, is agreed to be the enemy of the
public good. Hostility and ridicule pelt down on
anyone begging to differ.

This climate
experienced a hiatus when Auton traveled to
the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Autistics, the
untreated wasted autistics said by both sides to have
no place in society, or in these proceedings, briefly
were welcomed, were respected, and were considered. We
had rights, we stood equal. In a
situation where it seemed we could only lose, we won.
Briefly, the sun broke through and we and our allies
celebrated, unnoticed.

The non-autistic
factions and their phalanxes produced copious public
post-Auton analyses about how the SCC decision
impinges on their extremely important agendas.
Auton was by and for non-autistics throughout,
and this has never been more obvious than in the
immediate and eventual reactions to the SCC decision.
There was the uninterrupted clamour of non-autistics
with axes to grind. There was the scramble by the
factions and phalanxes to claim the high ground for
the next battle over our future. And those pretending
to advocate for the rights of autistics were beside
themselves with fury because these rights did, at the
SCC, unexpectedly emerge.

A. THE STARTLE
RESPONSE"Implicit in
these proceedings is the notion that autistics are
inhuman, and must be therefore made human. It is
only then that their rights will have been
respected."—Factum of the Intervener,
Michelle Dawson, Auton
(Guardian ad litem of) v. British Columbia
(Attorney General), SCC File
No.: 295081. Auton is
considered to be an historic autism human rights case.
Until its very end at the SCC, Auton had nothing
to do with our needs and rights, or with helping us in
any way to succeed in society as equals, as autistics.

2. O. Ivar Lovaas is
the psychologist who pioneered the treatment demanded
by the ABA parents in Auton. In a letter he
wrote in 1989, he illustrates how the interests and
indeed the humanity of autistics are discarded in
high-profile quarrels among non-autistics about what
is best for us. A scientific rival had berated Dr
Lovaas for one of his electric shock experiments. In
response, Dr Lovaas expressed how hurtful these
attacks on his reputation were. If he could change
history, he wrote, he would not have used electric
shock in this experiment in order to induce fear and
pain in his autistic study subjects.

3. Instead, he would
have used the then-popular holding therapy, which, he
noted, was known to produce considerable distress.
Autistics have identified holding therapy as abuse.
The narrow range of treatment offered by Dr Lovaas in
his rejoinder, and his overwhelming concern for his
own well-being, presage the relationship between
autistic people and those claiming to have our best
interests at heart in Auton.

4. The Auton
ABA parent petitioners demanded ABA (Applied Behaviour
Analysis)-based early Intensive Behaviour Intervention
(IBI)—which they also called Lovaas Autism Treatment,
or Lovaas—as "medically necessary" treatment for all
autistic Canadians. The original demands had been for
preschool-aged children, but as Auton
progressed, the age limit increased such that
eventually there seemed no age at which the
petitioners would stop considering ABA/IBI medically
necessary for any autistic who had not, to their
satisfaction, recovered.

5. The premise of Auton,
promoted by both factions and accepted by the lower
courts, is consistent with the premise of the
treatment demanded by the ABA parents. In Auton,
as in ABA/IBI, autistics are seen as entities lacking
the essential qualities universally held to define
humanity. We have no worth, dignity, integrity,
abilities, possibilities, and future. We are unable to
learn and we contribute nothing. We are by definition
inhuman and doomed. We do not belong in society, but
in institutions. We must pervasively improve before we
can be ushered into the fully human status, the human
rights, and the human dignity which are considered to
be inherent to all non-autistics.

6. There is a long
documented history of humans denying other humans
humanity and personhood. We would only unreasonably
expect that this kind of aberration would be confined
to centuries past. Where we have progressed is in
banishing these aberrations to the fringes of society,
such that their overt emergence in any but the most
marginal contexts is startling and produces immediate,
reflexive protests. When humans are dehumanized, there
are individual, organizational and societal startle
responses. Choruses of outrage instantly follow.

9. In his recent
book, Dr Lovaas describes a "pilot study" at the UCLA
Autism Clinic. The experimenters fired a starter’s
pistol without warning two feet behind the back of
each autistic child in this study. In spite of these
children being wired with sophisticated recording
equipment, no response to the gunshots could be
measured.

10. As often happens
in autism research, this experiment sheds less light
on autistics than on those pulling the trigger. But
with the roles reassigned, the absence of a startle
response speaks to the situation of autistics in
Canada throughout the history of Auton, and in
the wake of Auton’s ultimate decision.

11. The arguments
put forward by both sides in Auton depended on
the dehumanization of autistics and would have
collapsed without this dehumanization. I set out to
intervene in Auton because individuals and
organizations in positions of power and influence
failed reflexively to protest. There was no outrage.
Instead of being startled, individuals and
organizations either unholstered pistols of their own,
or provided the ammunition of encouragement, or
passively became inured. All were so entirely absorbed
in pursuing their own interests that nothing in the
gunfire struck them as amiss.

12. The
dehumanization of autistics failed to be startling or
outrageous. Then it garnered praise, sympathy,
approval by the lower courts, and medals. And the
adversarial judicial system failed to produce any
dissenting view. I decided to go to the Highest Court
of the Land.

B. THE INTOLERABLE
PRECEDENT"I believe in
the judiciary. So far, they have successfully
ferreted out the truth."—Sabrina Freeman,
founder/Executive Director, FEAT BC, Auton
parent petitioner, Globe and Mail, June 5, 2004

"I believe in
the judicial system and I cannot, in my wildest
dreams, imagine that the Supreme Court of Canada
could forsake these children." —Sabrina
Freeman, Vancouver Sun, Nov 18, 2004

"I’m confident
that the Supreme Court of Canada is going to
protect the most vulnerable group of Canadians."—Jean
Lewis, Director, FEAT BC, ABA parent, Vancouver
Sun, Nov 18, 2004

13. On the morning of
November 19, 2004, the SCC handed down its judgment in Auton (Guardian ad litem of) v.
British Columbia (Attorney General).
The ABA parents, astonishingly, lost. Their demand for
public funding for ABA/IBI as "medically necessary"
treatment for their autistic children was thrown
out.

14.
In their previous legal battles, the ABA parents had
easily prevailed. Their loss at the SCC was
described as stunning, but the comprehensiveness of
their failure was even more so. This was a total
defeat without mitigation and the ensuing uproar
shows no signs of subsiding.

15. While the SCC
decision looks minimal at first glance, it is more
than was strictly necessary to decide the case. The
Court established that the Auton parent
petitioners—Sabrina Freeman and three other ABA
parents—were claiming discrimination under no existing
law. The petitioners presupposed that all Canadians
have a right to public funding for all "medically
necessary" services. No such right or accompanying
benefit exists under the law for anyone. This took
care of the Canadian Charter of Rights andFreedoms
section 15 equality arguments at the first step of
analysis.

16. A case involving
an equality claim for a benefit not provided under the
law had not previously come before this Court. We now
know that engaging section 15 to cry discrimination
when the benefit involved does not exist is likely to
fail. Why this strategy didn’t fail in the lower
courts is a question that was overlooked in the post-Auton
ruckus.

17. In spite of the
simplicity of this equality analysis, the uniqueness
of Auton compelled the Court to elaborate on
their decision. They asked, what if the benefit
claimed were provided under the law?

18. In a second and
legally superfluous step of equality analysis, the SCC
looked for evidence that precisely equivalent groups
were provided with benefits that were specifically
denied to autistics. No such evidence exists on the
record because none was provided by the petitioners.
In step two, the Court therefore found no
discrimination, in the hypothetical case of the Auton
parents not failing at step one.

19. The Court went
on to dismiss the petitioners’ Charter section
7 arguments. The claim was that failing to fund Lovaas
Autism Treatment deprived autistics of life, health,
liberty, and security. The petitioners failed to
provide the necessary legal foundation for arguments
which the SCC described as "fleeting".

20. The British
Columbia government’s appeal was upheld by the SCC,
with the effect of overturning the lower court
decisions in Auton. These decisions were
certainly the "bad law" that the ABA parents
deliberately sought by making themselves into the
hardest of "hard cases", the most pitiful of innocent
victims, the most worthy of causes. So long as these
decisions stood, the inhumanity of autistics, as
agreed upon by both parties, was enshrined in Canadian
jurisprudence. A comprehensive disrespect for science,
ethics, and Canadian values as represented by the Charter,
also agreed upon by both parties, also was enshrined.

21. Disabled people
do not only need equal benefit of the law. We require
its equal protection, including from those intent on
agendas involving our remediation, rectification, or
eradication. While the overturning of the lower court
decisions in Auton does not guarantee
autistics will experience equality in Canadian
society, it has removed otherwise insurmountable
obstacles to us working towards, and eventually
achieving, this goal.

22. The parent
petitioners’ cross appeal, an attempt to improve on
their lower court victories, was also dismissed by the
SCC. After the decision, governments issued smug
statements that they could now dictate program
priorities unhampered by the judiciary. In reality,
the SCC, while failing to censure the BC government
for behaving as reprehensibly as their opponents, made
no such concession. Governments remain responsible for
writing and administering laws which neither
intentionally nor unintentionally are discriminatory,
in their effect on groups enumerated in the Charter.

23. From the outset,
Auton was a dispute between factions of
non-autistics united and indistinguishable in their
antipathy and disrespect for autistics. In the history
of Auton, and in the history of all similar
legal battles, the SCC decision is unprecedented. The
SCC restored some rudimentary form of citizenship for
autistics in Canada. The procedures and processes
designed to protect all other Canadians suddenly
protected autistics, and that had never happened
before. At the same time, the ABA parents who
throughout Auton had hovered above the law
suddenly fell under it.

24. Canadian
society, under the unopposed leadership of the ABA
parents, had been educated to find these developments
intolerable, and responded accordingly.

C. THE AUTISM
HORROR SHOW"I've had
parents call me about the possibility of refugee
status to the United States. Can you believe it?
Canadian refugees to the United States where they
don't discriminate against disabled children."—Jean
Lewis, CTV, Nov 21, 2004

"‘It means
we've lost another generation of children to
autism,’ [Sabrina] Freeman said. ‘And they're
going to be institutionalized as adults. That's
what it means.’ […] Freeman … said the decision
will directly result in B.C. children going into
foster care ‘probably in the next six months
because the parents are not going to be able to
live with a child not in a treatment program.’"—Victoria
Times-Colonist, Nov 20, 2004

"It’s open
season on people with disabilities. A lot of
people are really hanging on by a thread. When
people get really desperate, they either give up
their child to the state, or they murder their
child."—Sabrina Freeman, Vancouver Sun, Nov
20, 2004

"It has been
suggested that if one were to replace the word
‘autism’ with ‘cancer,’ the gravity of the
situation may be made clearer. Cancer, after all,
is an entity that most people have been touched
by. Autism, on the other hand, is an ‘invisible
disability.’ These children are beautiful, they
look so ‘normal,’ not ‘sick.’ Yet, cancer is an
apt analogy. Cancer is a disease of abnormal cell
growth resulting from genetic mutations. […]
Cancer that is not eradicated will advance and (in
most cases) cause death."—Dr Ursula Lee,
physician and ABA parent, Vancouver Sun, Nov 23,
2004

"You have to
choose your illnesses carefully. My son would be
better off having leukemia because then he would
have treatment immediately."—Andrew
Kavchak, ABA parent, Reuters, Nov 19, 2004

"No one
understands the horror we are going through."—Andrew
Kavchak, Ottawa Sun, November 24, 2004

"Most of the
families that I know in this province are
suffering beyond what you can even conceive. They
are selling their homes, if they have them to
sell. I will speak of my own self. I have nothing.
I will remain in poverty for the rest of my life.
My grandfather developed this province's health
care system and my son is outside of that. I will
never own a home, a decent car. I may never even
be able to hold down a decent job because of my
son's disability. He is improving, but I have
given up everything to save my son's life, and you
know what? I would do it all again. I have given
up my health, my husband and at times, my country.
I had to leave Canada to seek treatment when they
would not provide it here, and families are
suffering. Parents think about killing themselves
and their children in this country. It is
horrible."—Norrah Whitney, ABA parent,
executive director of FEAT Ontario, testimony to
the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs,
Science, and Technology, February 15, 2005

"About one in
every 195 children are now being diagnosed within
the autism spectrum. Or put another way, ‘today it
is our children, tomorrow it can be yours or your
grandchildren.’"—Robert J. Shalka and Elena
Gudyrenko,ABA parents,Hill Times,
March 28, 2005

25. The ABA parent
faction and phalanx called the SCC decision devastating,
a travesty, cowardly, incompetent, corrupt, horrible,
cruel, tragic, and heartless. It represents, they said,
carte blanche for governments to trample the
rights of disadvantaged groups; a "massive step back to
Victorian times"; a profound miscarriage of justice; and
the end of equality, Canada, the Charter, and
the SCC as we know them. Parents of autistic children
will become refugees and/or their offspring will en
masse flood into institutions, never to emerge
except as red ink in provincial budgets.

26. In the lower
courts, the Auton parent petitioners
successfully painted their children as horrors and
themselves as martyrs. The SCC noted this forceful
strategy while failing to be swayed by it. This
failure provoked an outpouring of public sympathy,
making it unlikely the ABA parents would contemplate
alternative strategies.

27. Certainly they
accused the SCC Justices of being as shameful as their
decision. Government officials were described in
similar terms. The ABA parents have demanded an
inquiry into the "total unadulterated garbage" and
"shocking errors" of the SCC decision and into the
officers of government and law who conspired to
produce it.

28. However, no ABA
parent accused these officers of being so inherently
defective they do not belong in families or in
society. These officers were not en masse
relegated to foster homes, then institutions. They
were not described as "a suck on the tax system", as
Dr Freeman said of autistics.

29. Nor were these
officers characterized as having a cancerous nature.
Also, they were not said to be better off if they had
cancer. The ABA parents did not threaten that, because
they did not get their way, these officers may be
killed. Instead, they threatened these officers, and
the greater public, with the possibility that they,
too, may have autistic children or grandchildren.

30. Autistic
children hear and read. They may reasonably fear they
will shortly be removed to foster homes or
institutions when this inevitability is widely
disseminated and ubiquitously reported in the media.
Some autistics will have read that some parents,
perhaps their parents, were desperate and may kill
them. Many more would have read or heard that they
have something exactly like cancer, and have only one
hope for getting rid of this and surviving.

31. ABA parents and
their supporters filled the media with stories of
autistic children now deprived of life-saving
treatment, tragically lost, drifting away, doomed to
marginalization. This also will have been heard and
read by autistic children. In comparison with what
they did to autistics after the SCC decision, the ABA
parent faction treated the Court and the governments
with respect, if not kindly.

32. The strategy of
the ABA parents was flattered by imitation, if not
actual competition for the most horrific scenarios.
The intervener group LEAF/DAWN, whose Auton
written and oral arguments had redeeming qualities,
responded to the SCC decision with promises that
autistics would now not only be institutionalized,
which perhaps was not sensationalist enough, but would
be sexually assaulted.

33. Influential
editorial boards managed both to congratulate the SCC
on its decision, and to enter the horrifying-scenario
stakes. While the Court was correct, they maintained,
provincial governments absolutely must fund Lovaas
(the "key" to the "prison" of autism) for all
autistics. Nothing else can impede us from rolling
downhill into the awaiting institutions, where we will
accumulate and destroy the economy.

34. The competition
for the most horrifying portrayal of autistics, and
the most poignant description of the destroyed and
horrific lives of our parents, quickly invaded the
federal political arena, where it continues to
flourish in the House of Commons and the Senate. Rules
of procedure, and of basic human decency, have flown
out the august windows of Parliament, and the ABA
parents have triumphantly reported every grotesquely
false portrayal, every sensationalist denigration of
the autistics for whom they claim to advocate.

35. The horrific
scenarios were never examined critically, by the
media, by disability or other organizations, or by
Canada’s political leaders. Martyrs with horribly sick
children get a lot of leeway, not just in breaking
rules, but in immunity from scrutiny. They are assumed
to be right. For example, all media outlets
uncritically reported that 90%, if not all,
ABA/IBI-deprived autistics end up in institutions.

36. Tristram Smith,
the behaviour analyst and colleague of Dr Lovaas, was
an expert witness for the parents in Auton. In
a letter published in 1988, Dr Smith wrote that the
approximate 1960s era rate of institutionalization for
autistics was 40% while the rate as of 1980 was 8%. A
similar assertion was made by Drs Lovaas and Smith the
same year in a book chapter. In 1996, Dr Smith wrote
that these approximate rates, for the 1960s, then as
of 1980, were 39%-74% and 7%, respectively.

37. A study done in
Canada, led by Peter Szatmari and published in 1989,
followed up diagnosed autistics with an IQ over 65 (Dr
Lovaas' "best outcomes" had an average IQ of just
under 70 at intake), born before 1970. Of the 16
autistics followed-up (ages 17-34; IQ 68-110), seven
had university degrees (one was an MBA), and one was a
community college graduate. This represents a higher
percentage of university graduation than in the
typical population.

38. Half of Dr
Szatmari’s autistics were completely independent; six
required minimal assistance (I would fall into this
category); one required "moderate" supervision; only
one, the youngest, required "constant" supervision.
Most were working or were students. One was married.
None was institutionalized. All were deprived of
Lovaas Autism Treatment, a treatment which was not yet
marketed when these autistics were children.

39. This study, like
Dr Smith’s statistics, pertains to the specific
diagnosis of autism, versus the autistic spectrum at
issue in Auton and in the horrific scenarios.
All of those with an Asperger's diagnosis, as well as
93% of those with a PDD-NOS diagnosis, will have a
measured IQ over 70. The majority with the specific
diagnosis of autism now also have an IQ over 70. For
example, in an epidemiological study of autism
published in 2000, the most recent cohort, born in the
early 1990s, shows that 75% of those within the
specific diagnosis of autism have a measured IQ of
more than 70.

40. It could be
argued that perhaps Canada is an anomaly, with
particularly institution-prone autistics, and that
there have been catastrophic changes since Dr
Szatmari’s study. What if the horrific scenarios were
true? Christopher Hinkson, counsel for the Auton
parents, as well as the parent-supporting intervener
groups in Auton, issued the figure of
$500,000/year for every institutionalized autistic.
Other figures were reported, the lowest of which was
$100,000/year.

41. As of 2004,
Canada has about 48,000 autistic children (ages 0-19).
There are 144,000 adults, with only an insignificant
few having had ABA/IBI as children. According to the
horrific scenarios, at least 128,000 of us must be
uncontrollable, unsalvageable, and therefore
institutionalized. This does not count older
ABA/IBI-deprived autistic children, who may similarly
be written off. Autistic adults in institutions must
be costing Canada from $12.8 billion to $64 billion a
year. Ontario must have about 50,000 institutionalized
adult autistics, costing from $5 billion to $25
billion a year.

42. The Ontario
Ministry of Community and Social Services provides for
these adults. For the fiscal year ending in 2004, the
total operating expenses for this Ministry, which
among its many other mandates also runs Ontario’s
welfare system, amounted to $6 billion.

43. In reality,
claiming that 90% of autistic adults who remain
autistic belong in institutions is at the same level
of accuracy and ethics as claiming that 90% of
aboriginal adults who remain aboriginal belong in
prison. A small percentage of autistic adults are
likely in institutions, and this percentage exceeds
that of the typical adult population. A small
percentage of aboriginal adults are in prison, and
this percentage exceeds that of the non-aboriginal
adult population. However, "autism" does not cause
autistics to end up in institutions, any more than
"aboriginality" causes aboriginal people to end up in
jail. Advocates in other areas understand the role of
history, intolerance, and ostracism, as well as
mistreatment and abuse, in the outcomes of people with
differences. In contrast, "autism advocates" insist
that we inherently belong in institutions and can
escape them only by sufficiently becoming
non-autistic.

44. There is
evidence that institutionalization, along with the
unethical use of medications and physical restraints,
is a cause of inevitably poor outcomes in autism,
instead of institutionalization being the result of
the inevitably poor outcomes promised in the horrific
scenarios. The forceful promotion of these scenarios
contributes to a society in which it becomes
inevitable that more autistics will be
institutionalized, and will therefore have poor
outcomes.

45. The refugee
horrific scenario is premised on the US being a
paradise for autistics and for all disabled people. A
recent meta-study of 68 US ABA/IBI legal cases under
the IDEA law shows American ABA parents losing half
these cases (both for kind of treatment, and for
implementation of treatment), a far worse record than
the Canadian ABA parents’. Major US media stories
headline, or mention in passing, the struggles of
American families to obtain ABA/IBI services and have
them paid for. The New Yorker ran a lengthy feature
about one such struggle. In an article devoted to
American ABA/IBI battles in both the private medical
insurance and the public education systems, the New
York Times reported that one state’s education
department provides ABA/IBI for 900 autistic children,
but not for more than 3,000 others.

46. In its recent
autism series, NBC reported, about US parents fighting
for ABA/IBI, that "because of a lack of scientific
evidence supporting certain therapies, parents often
find themselves battling health insurers for coverage
or suing school systems to provide home-based
instruction." An American autism professional states,
about the legal situation in the US, "Some parents
hire a lawyer before they meet the preschool teacher."
There are stories of millions spent in disputes over
ABA/IBI, and US-based websites indistinguishable in
their laments from those of Canadian FEAT groups. An
American parent of an autistic child wrote in a letter
to Newsweek, "Where is the outrage from taxpayers who
will eventually foot the bill to care for these
individuals when the families can no longer do so? My
son's future would be much brighter if he had AIDS."

47. Universally
feared fatal diseases lend poignancy to the horrific
scenarios, whether they are deployed in court, in the
media, or in political arenas. Auton, pre- and
post-SCC decision, has resulted in widespread public
acceptance that autism is worthless and dreadful, as
cancer and AIDS certainly are. The message—from
editorial boards, judges, autism societies, political
parties, etc—is that getting rid of every bit of
autism in a person, and in society, would be a very
good thing, a great improvement. It is the prevention
or remediation of an unwanted burden on society and
represents a loss of exactly nothing.

48. Several weeks
before the SCC decision was handed down, the Globe and
Mail published an article about a group of people with
significant inherent differences resulting in their
existence being dreaded. These people are viewed as
"economic and social burdens". However, their
existence can be prevented or curtailed in many ways,
and efforts in these areas have been successful enough
that their high prevalence versus the typical
population has significantly diminished. The
unacceptable burden on many families was alleviated or
eliminated. This sounds like successful control of a
serious congenital disorder, but it is not. In this
case, the significant inherent differences result from
femaleness. These "economic and social burdens" are
females, in current day urban India.

49. When "advocates"
work tirelessly to ensure an identifiable group of
people is rendered worthless via their comprehensive
denigration as burdens on society, these advocates are
creating a society in which people in this group will
suffer and do badly, even if they are competent, or
brilliant, or Albert Einstein.

50. Unlike all other
groups, autistics are considered impervious to
discrimination, intolerance and hatred, even when
these are officially funded as public policy and
practiced by those, like the ABA parent faction and
phalanx, claiming to advocate for us. What would
obviously hurt other identifiable groups does not hurt
us because we are unhurtable. We cannot protest
against the horrific scenarios and their false
foundations because the first steps on the road to Auton
were to dehumanize us, to pathologize our experiences
and abilities, to erase our emotions and our voices,
and to deny our dignity, integrity, and existence as
autistics.

D. THE PERFECTLY
FLAWED DECISION"Regarding the
supposedly superior legal minds of justices sitting
at Canada's highest court, another highly disturbing
outcome of the Auton case is the following: if we
have seven of the most intelligent legal minds
working on this case, and each justice has clerks
who are top-notch law students from across Canada
working for these justices (which presumably makes
thirty-five very intelligent legal minds), how in
God's name did they make over 20 factual errors in
that short, find-the-nearest-exit judgment."—Sabrina
Freeman, Jan 7, 2005

"Ms Dawson
rejects the accounts of the facts provided by both
the Respondents and the Appellants."—Factum
of the intervener, Michelle Dawson

51. There were 14
interveners in Auton at the SCC. Eight
government interveners (seven provinces plus Canada)
agreed with the facts set out by the British Columbia
government. There were also six non-government
interveners, representing a total of nine organizations,
eight of them being autism or disability organizations,
and one being concerned with women’s rights. Of these
six interveners, three accepted the ABA parents’ facts,
one explicitly deferred to the facts of both parties,
one did the same by default, and I rejected the facts of
both parties. No intervener can claim to have respect
for accuracy and for autistics if they accepted or
failed to oppose the facts as laid out by either or both
parties in Auton.

52. False and
pejorative views of autism were presented by both
parties. These views played essential and prominent
roles in their respective and largely
indistinguishable positions. This went unchallenged by
all the government interveners, and by all the
organization-based non-government interveners who,
while claiming to represent the best interests of
autistics and/or all disabled people, were complicit
in perpetuating gross stereotypes of autistics as
"fact".

53. I found it
impossible to imagine any decision deriving from the
history of Auton, up to and including the SCC
hearing,that would not result in permanent
harm to autistics in Canada and elsewhere. Nor could I
imagine that an autistic voice, speaking against the
will of both parties, would be heard.

54. The Court
subverted my expectations. Their decision is flawed,
fair, and just; it both mirrors and reverses Auton’s
history. Most importantly, this history now includes
two overturned lower court decisions in which neither
science nor law nor autistics were respected.

55. Errors in fact
loom large in this history, and their long shadows are
part of the SCC decision. They are historical
artifacts of the way Auton was argued. The
adversarial system failed in Auton, and this
resulted in an absence of respect for the existing
science and for principles of science and ethics. The
false information presented strategically by both
parties in order to denigrate autistics appears in the
SCC decision, but in a context which highlights the
problem of gross errors in fact. Putting Ivar Lovaas
in Texas is as anti-factual as putting 90% of
autistics in group homes or institutions. The SCC runs
these "facts" one after the other. They are equally
wrong, and reflect the inaccuracies and biases in the
"facts" about autism and its treatment in Auton,
going back to day one.

56. The SCC decision
importantly mistakes one of the parents’ main
witnesses for a government witness. This too is a
perfect mirror of Auton’s history. The
ostensibly-at-loggerheads parties tweedledummed and
tweedledeed their way through the proceedings. The
trial judge quoted the testimony of the government’s
star witness as definitive evidence in support of the
parents. Excerpts of the cross-examination of a
government witness show identical ignorance of the
science and equal disrespect for autistics on both
sides. My intervention stressed the wide areas of
agreement between the parties, all having to do with
the nature, worth, treatment, and rights of autistics.

57. I also urged the
Court to exercise caution in deciding the larger
constitutional issues for which Auton was a
magnet. This caution permeates the SCC’s decision. The
Court stayed within the realm of their own expertise,
which is not medicine or autism, but the law. For
example, there was no attempt to determine what is or
is not "medically necessary" for autistics; the SCC
decision is indifferent to this question. The parents’
section 7 arguments, which were sensationalist and
offensive when they weren’t merely ignorant, were
summarily dismissed.

58. The SCC decision
is also indifferent to cost issues. Auton was
awash with dire threats of what would happen both if
ABA/IBI were funded and if it weren’t. After
the decision, the ABA parent faction and phalanx,
including in this instance LEAF/DAWN, were scathing in
attacking the Court for having been scared off by the
government side about the ruinous costs of a decision
in the parents’ favour.

59. These were the
same parents and supporters who throughout Auton
brandished cost-benefit analyses "proving" autistics
are so inherently worthless that without ABA/IBI, we
will collapse the economy. The SCC decision is free of
any such dramatic and prejudicial threats.

60. The Court took
no consideration of the many parent-side interveners
who claimed to be authorities about what autistics
need. The Court mentioned no interventions at all
except mine. Autism Society Canada (ASC) claimed to
represent all autistic Canadians, yet their
intervention, a paean to cost benefit analyses, was
ignored. The SCC’s wholesale dismissal of autism and
disability organization interveners is a fair
rejoinder to the expedient non-representation and
misrepresentation of autistics by these organizations.

61. The SCC called
ABA/IBI "emergent" and "novel". In part, this referred
to the very recent and limited funding of ABA/IBI in
some jurisdictions, along with no funding at all in
others. However, a glance through the index of the
Appellant’s Record shows that of the 5,000 pages of
evidence in Auton, less than 30 are devoted to
published studies of ABA/IBI.

62. This represents
three articles describing two studies. One is Dr
Lovaas’ 1987 study, with its 1993 follow-up. The
parents were firm in declaring they did not want the
treatment described in this study. They did not want
contingent aversives, which Dr Lovaas, in his study
design, proved not only essential in producing stable
behaviour change, but essential in achieving the
"mainstreaming" of autistics as promised by the
parents.

63. The other study
is retrospective. Records were analyzed for study
subjects whose results were already known. In this
second study, led by Dr Smith and published in 1997,
gains were minimal and highly variable, including
significant losses, in the treatment group. The
average IQ gain in the treatment group was eight
points, almost half of which resulted from gains in
one of the eleven experimental subjects. There were no
reports of "recovery", and many measures were based on
subjective observations.

64. If ABA/IBI were
not "emergent" or "novel", surely the parents could
have supplied more than two published studies of this
treatment, neither of which supports the claims they
were making.

65. In comparison,
the record in Auton contains an overwhelming
amount of evidence from both sides devoted to
secondary sources, personal anecdotes, and hired
opinions recruited according to the agendas of
non-autistic factions who had nothing good to say
about autistics. It is possible the SCC noticed this
and other discrepancies. But contrary to the post-Auton
outcry, the words "emergent" and "novel" were not
central to the SCC’s decision. These words appear only
in the superfluous second step of the Court’s equality
analysis. The crucial first step was not based on any
aspect of ABA/IBI except that it is not provided by
physicians.

66. The ABA parents
have successfully educated the public that ABA/IBI is
"medically necessary" treatment for the quasi-fatal
disease of autism, to the point where many assume that
medical experts pioneered and are responsible for
providing this treatment. For example, an outraged
letter-writer predicted in the Globe and Mail that not
only would ABA parents flee the country because of the
SCC decision, so would "the medical experts we parents
rely on to create these vital programs for our
children". The SCC did not make this kind of
comprehensive error.

67. The Court’s more
fundamental acknowledgment that ABA/IBI is
controversial as to its history, nature, claims, and
goals serves to protect autistics and all disabled or
disadvantaged people. We are always at risk of having
non-disabled or non-disadvantaged groups deem us
defective and burdensome to society. We are then at
risk for being subject, without consent, to arbitrary
measures designed to alleviate or eliminate the
differences which the majority have decided are
worthless and intolerable. We are protected when
caution is shown in examining promises that unwanted
differences, and unwanted people, can be altered,
restricted, or eliminated to the great benefit of
society as a whole.

E. THE BLANK SLATE"You see, you
start pretty much from scratch when you work with an
autistic child. You have a person in the physical
sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they
are not people in the psychological sense. One way
to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to
see it as a matter of constructing a person. You
have the raw materials, but you have to build the
person."—Ivar Lovaas, 1974

"In any case,
what one usually sees when first meeting an
autistic child who is 2, 3, or even 10 years of
age is a child who has all the external physical
characteristics of a normal child—that is, he has
hair, and he has eyes and he has a nose, and he
may be dressed in a shirt and trousers—but who
really has no behaviors that one can single out as
distinctively ‘human’. The major job then, for a
therapist—whether he's behaviorally oriented or
not—would seem to be a very intriguing and
significant one, namely, the creation or
construction of a truly human behavioral
repertoire where none exists."—Ivar Lovaas,
1976

"To use another
analogy, at the beginning of treatment, the
children may be regarded as having close to a
tabula rasa. In this sense they can be considered
very young persons, as persons with little or no
experience, presenting the teacher with the task
of building a person where little had existed
before."—Ivar Lovaas, 1989

"Instead, the
fascinating part for me was to observe persons
with eyes and ears, teeth and toenails, walking
around yet presenting few of the behaviors one
would call social or human. Now, I had the chance
to build language and other social and
intellectual behaviors where none had existed, a
good test of how much help a learning-based
approach could offer."—Ivar Lovaas, 1993

"[T]hey need to
be taught virtually everything, and the teaching
needs to proceed in minute increments instead of
major steps. Thus, at the beginning of treatment,
the individuals may be regarded as being close to
a tabula rasa. In this sense, they can be
considered very young or recently born, as persons
with little or no experience."—Ivar Lovaas,
2002

68. ABA/IBI as an
autism treatment is advertised to be observation- rather
than theory-driven. A reading of the relevant science
undermines this presentation. From the outset, behaviour
analysts like Dr Lovaas reported their observations of
autistics in ways betraying comprehensive a priori
prejudices which were copiously reported not just as
theory but truth.

69. Autistic
characteristics were described as atavistic,
pathological, bizarre, impoverished, and primitive.
Autistics were said to be "a sad and baffling lot",
"untouchable—even more so than the lepers of old";
they cause "confusion, agony, and despair". Then we
were firmly classified as less-than-human blank
slates. The portrayal of autistics as inhuman, and as
inherently failing to meet the requirements for
personhood, has continued to the present and was
ubiquitous in Auton and Auton’s
aftermath.

70. Under the
influence of Auton’s history, Allan C.
Hutchinson, associate dean at York University's
Osgoode Hall Law School, wrote a representative
version of autistic inhumanity or non-personhood. In a
prominent Globe and Mail op-ed piece, he despairs
because the SCC decision denies constitutional status
to autistics in Canada. That is, he believes that
unless we undergo fully-funded ABA/IBI, we are not
human at all. We are the zeros described by Dr Lovaas.
Our humanity and our personhood have to be built from
scratch, because we don’t inherently have any. Mr
Hutchinson accepts that there are humans who are not
born but must be built, and only by being built can
these entities attain humanity and therefore
constitutional status.

71. Mr Hutchinson
has a great deal of company, as witnessed by the post-Auton
clamour generated by those calling themselves equality
rights or autism advocates. As noted above, the SCC
decision was widely declared to be the end of
equality, Canada, justice, the Charter, etc,
as we know them—all because autistics would not as a
matter of course have our transformation from inhuman
to human via Lovaas fully funded as "medically
necessary" treatment. This widespread alarm takes as a
starting point that anything is better than being
autistic, and that there is literally nothing to lose
if autistics are medically mandated to dedicate our
lives to achieving non-autistic status.

72. This view of
autistics is most strikingly manifested in ABA/IBI not
in the behaviour analysts’ catalogue of apparent
autistic weaknesses, but in how ABA/IBI practitioners
deal with evident autistic strengths. In 1985, a
published study co-authored by Dr Lovaas looked at
"self-stimulatory" behaviours in six of the
experimental group children whose outcomes were later
reported in Dr Lovaas’ famous 1987 study. One of these
six children, a "best-outcome" or "recovered" child,
was a savant. By the time this boy was in
kindergarten, he was a calendar calculator. This
ability "suddenly emerged". The boy was able rapidly
and accurately to extract weekdays for any date in any
of the five years since his birth year. He had other
extraordinary abilities. A neighbourhood woman called
him a "genius".

73. Dr Lovaas
classified this boy’s genius as "obsessions", and just
more "self-stimulatory" abnormal behaviours. Various
methods, including the physical punishment which was
essential to Lovaas (1987), had been used consistently
over the course of this boy’s treatment in order to
eliminate all traces of unwanted autistic behaviours.
Successfully extinguishing the unwanted genius
behaviour near the end of this boy’s treatment was
described as requiring only "minor discouragement from
his parents and the project staff".

74. Special, or
savant, abilities are strongly associated with both
autism and with autistic traits. Peaks of ability,
which act as precursors to special or savant
abilities, exist in all autistics. They are central to
who we are and how we learn. Behaviour analysts have
treated these scientific facts as detritus littering
the road to normalcy, or as a mirage. The
very-respected behaviour analyst Gina Green, while
urging her fellow behaviour analysts to renew their
"vows to science", also warns us all against being
fooled by autistics who "seem to have astonishing
special talents", as if our abilities, too, are in the
realm of the unethical pseudoscience she rails
against.

75. Before and after
the SCC decision, "autism advocates" and behaviour
analysts have informed the public and the courts that
without ABA/IBI, autistics are congenitally unable to
learn anything at all. These advocates and experts
would have me believe that Dr Lovaas somehow
incrementally taught and reinforced the savant
abilities of his autistic study subject, in order, one
supposes, to have the pleasure of extinguishing them
once they "suddenly emerged".

76. Dr Lovaas, in
theory and in practice, did deny the possibility of
autistics learning outside of ABA/IBI. At the same
time, he encountered this non-existent autistic
learning so consistently that he found it necessary to
name this phenomenon. This was learning by autistics
which, he admitted, happened in the absence of either
teaching or reinforcement. By Dr Lovaas’ rules, this
could not be learning, so he called it "generative
self-stimulatory behaviour".

77. Having decided
that our learning was not real learning, he went on to
claim that it was only through the behavioural
suppression of some forms of this "generative
self-stimulatory behaviour" that "higher" forms, such
as calendar calculation, can emerge. In other words,
Dr Lovaas claimed both that his treatment created
savants abilities, which could not otherwise be
created, and successfully eradicated them. Regardless
of convincing, if not spectacular, evidence to the
contrary, and like the ABA parents he inspires, Dr
Lovaas has never veered from his certainty that
without ABA/IBI, autistics cannot learn anything at
all.

78. From Kanner’s
first 11 case studies onwards, the scientific fact of
autistic learning and abilities is well-documented in
the science, in both savant and non-savant autistics.
Consistent findings in the science both illuminate and
refute the prejudices of those many who, in the wake
of the SCC decision, described autistic lives as lost,
wasted or destroyed. Autism has been characterized as
a death sentence, and ABA/IBI as life-saving, as if
autistics who remain autistic are not merely lost,
wasted, and destroyed, but dead. These assertions are
as anti-scientific as they are offensive,
irresponsible, and unethical.

79. The existing
science is also a forceful denial of the blank slate
ideology put forth by Dr Lovaas, promoted in Auton,
anddefended as gospel by the equality and
disability rights advocates who look at us and see
nothing at all.

80. Auton’s
legacy now includes this wide array of political,
academic, and organizational equality and disability
rights advocates who accept the premise that autistics
are inherently so inferior, so non-equal, that we are
not genuinely human. Among them are the pro-parent Auton
interveners, that is, all interveners upholding a
violation of section 15 rights arising from Auton,
and/or upholding the lower court decisions. This is
another way of saying all non-government SCC
interveners except me.

81. All these Auton-fed
guardians of equality have dehumanized autistics as a
matter of course or convenience. They deny our worth
and abilities. They maintain that only by striving,
via "medically necessary" treatment, to be
non-autistic can autistics become human, and in so
becoming, achieve equality in Canada. They and their
admirers and imitators have failed to notice that autistics
are human, and have interests, and live
consequences. Like Dr Lovaas and his followers, they
have treated us like blank slates, onto which their
own agendas are expediently written.

F. THE LIFE-SAVING
TREATMENT"There is
something about autism that to me gave meaning to
the phrase ‘death in life’. Autism is an impossible
condition of being there and not being there; a
person without a self; a life without a soul. […]
She will not sit in the corner. She will not play
with strings. She will not not look at me. She will
not be mute. She may want it. I will not have it.
She will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the
human condition."—Catherine Maurice, ABA
parent, 1993

"I compare it
to a sink full of water. With the onset of autism
it's like you just pull the plug on the sink. The
longer you let it go, the less you have to work
with. […] We have days with Ryan that are hell.
But we have a lot of good days -- we've managed to
pull him out of the cesspool of autism."—Judy
Anderson, ABA parent and lead petitioner in
Anderson (an Auton-related case won by the
parents), North Shore News, October 27, 1997

"Would you be
outraged if there were only one effective
treatment to save your sick child's life, and the
BC Government refused to cover it under Medicare?
Parents of autistic children in this province
don't have to imagine it. For us, it's real, it's
now, and we are fighting for nothing less than the
lives of our children."—Sabrina Freeman,
FEAT BC Press Release, March 30, 1998

"I would like
to invite you to meet my SON/DAUGHTER; one of the
young lives that is being saved by this
treatment."—sample letter to MP, ABA
petition website

"I am
absolutely convinced that the only chance children
with autism have is sitting before me today. The
idea of a child's life wasted, destroyed, merely
because of systemic attitudinal discrimination
rooted deeply behind government walls and policy
is, beyond doubt, a most sobering reality. […]
Their treatment can only be paralleled with that
of Japanese Canadians during World War II, who
were rounded up and placed in internment camps.
Institutions, if you want to call them that. If we
complacently allow government and society to treat
children with autism as second-class citizens,
then we massacre the vision of Canada, the legacy
left by one of this country's greatest leaders,
Pierre ElliottTrudeau. His vision of Canada died
the day those tiny disabled feet pattered into the
Supreme Court of Canada, only to be impaled by
both provincial and federal legal armies
determined to defeat their equality rights.
Society should be judged by how it treats those
who need help, and on this score, sadly, I must
say Canada fails miserably. You must in your sober
capacity bring in new legislation, so this black
mark on the social fabric of this nation never
occurs again. You have the power to save these
lives."—Norrah Whitney, ABA parent,
executive director of FEAT Ontario, testimony to
the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs,
Science, and Technology, February 15, 2005

"Your donation
can be the helping hand that helps lead a child
out of the darkness of this insidious disorder
into the light of the real world."—from the
FEAT Alberta website

"It doesn't
matter if a kid can read and write and do algebra
if he can't go out to dinner with his family."—Bridget
Taylor, PhD, BCBA, referring to treatment goals
for autistic children in ABA/IBI, in the New York
Times, October 22, 2004

82. Within weeks of the
SCC decision, Nova Scotia became the ninth of ten
Canadian provinces to fund ABA/IBI for autistic
children. This new program is in the healthcare system.
Only Saskatchewan fails comprehensively to fund ABA/IBI;
Alberta funds it up to age 18. Before Auton was
heard at the SCC, the office of Quebec’s health minister
informed me that ABA/IBI is "scientifically proven" as
an autism treatment. This minister decided to promote
and fund ABA/IBI on the basis of the work of the same
health technology academics designated by the ABA
parents as "enemy number one". The Quebec government has
also initiated ABA/IBI specialized training in four
universities.

83. The Quebec and
Ontario governments both informed me that not one
autistic was consulted in any of their autism
treatment decision-making. The same is likely true in
all other provinces. Not to be outdone, the federal
government proudly and opulently funds what they call
an effort to prevent autism. A federal cabinet
minister bestows her approval and power on a
parent-run and autistic-free American funding body
whose goal is to prevent or cure autism. This
government has also denied the existence of autistic
lives and voices, funded an autism conference from
which autistics were banned, and continues to fund
Autism Society Canada, a pressure group which calls
autistics "very ill" and "afflicted" and has the sole
purpose of promoting ABA/IBI.

84. While there are
ongoing legal skirmishes over exactly how unlimited
provincial ABA/IBI funding should be, the ABA parents,
the provincial and federal governments, and even the
health technology academics—who, like the parents and
governments, have not consulted with autistics—are
still, post-SCC-decision, monotonously on the same
page re the nature, proper place, and appropriate
treatment of autistics.

85. The ABA parent
post-SCC-decision all-out assault was not against
their ostensible adversaries, but against the rights,
dignity, and existence of autistics. They demand that
the Canada Health Act be changed to mandate ABA/IBI as
medical treatment for all autistics. They will not
stop until, via lobbying and petitioning in Ottawa,
all autistic Canadians legally become sick, and until
becoming normal becomes, for all autistic Canadians,
"medically necessary".

86. The ABA parents
have impressive political and organizational support,
and no genuine opposition, but carefully portray
themselves as downtrodden underdogs. They call
autistic children a "minority", whose rights they are
championing, but they oppose any rights for autistics
except for the "right to treatment" to stop being
autistic. In no uncertain terms, the ABA parents are
against providing autistics with the assistance and
materials we need in order to succeed as autistics.
Successful autistics are oxymoronic to them, and an
anathema. Like "autism", "acceptance" is, to these
"autism advocates", a dirty word.

87. At the same time
as they cry "minority rights", the ABA parents insist
that accepting, understanding, appreciating, and
protecting human difference is terribly wrong, and
harmful to minorities. Their vision for minorities,
including disabled people, is that there must be
unlimited funding of medical treatments to remediate
and remove human differences. It is essential also for
society to be educated by people like themselves to
find such differences sick, abhorrent and horrifying.
Then minorities can, through unlimited medical
treatment, aspire to being normal—like the wanted,
welcomed majority—and can dedicate our entire
existence to struggling with our entire being towards
this one desirable, ideal goal. Then our lives—which
otherwise would be forfeit to the soulless, lifeless,
hopeless, darkness of the cesspool, or is it the
internment camp, of autism, or of whatever human
difference is currently being denigrated—will be
saved.

88. Pierre Trudeau’s
vision for Canada was not that human difference must
be eradicated. He did not demand that minority groups
undergo medically necessary treatment to resemble or
become indistinguishable from the normal majority. He
wanted individuals protected from the arbitrary
actions of the state. There are few more arbitrary
actions than the government-approved forced
eradication of human difference via a medical
treatment applied intensively to clients unable to
consent.

89. Mr Trudeau would
not have been likely to support Dr Lovaas who,
concurrent with the autism treatment reported in his
1987 study, conducted and defended an "effective"
ABA-based early IBI to "save" the lives of boys at
risk for non-heterosexual development, and to prevent
and cure the pathology of homosexuality. In fact, it
was Mr Trudeau who, as justice minister, declared that
the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation.
He removed homosexuality from the criminal code within
years of Dr Lovaas writing, more than once, that
intolerance against minorities, such as homosexuals,
should be responded to by changing the targets of this
intolerance to conform with the prejudices of the
majority.

G. THE DISABILITY
COMMUNITY"The
first troublesome document that was accepted for
intervener status by the SCC was written by a very
eloquent, literate woman who claims to be autistic,
although there is professional opinion that brings
doubt to this claim. In fact, this woman has never
formally established the bona fides of her purported
autism diagnosis. Her affidavit, replete with
irrelevant content and many inaccuracies, was
submitted without showing the court any evidence
whatsoever to support the claim she is even
autistic; however, she portrays herself as
representative of all autistic people. We, in
Canada, love to impale ourselves on the sword of
political correctness so much so that even the
Supreme Court of Canada justices actually took a
so-called autistic Intervener seriously. Of course,
we were not given any opportunity to address what in
my opinion is idiocy and establish any substance to
her claim to the diagnosis of autism."—Dr Freeman, Jan 27,
2005

"The
Respondents oppose the applications for leave to
appeal by: […] Michelle Dawson because, in our
respectful opinion, the issues will be adequately
canvassed by the Court by those referred to above,
and of course the parties themselves."—Solicitors
for the Respondents (the Auton parents),
Feb 26, 2004

"I have taken
the time to talk to all kinds of officials from
the autistic [sic] community and they have
actually told me not to respond to you as many of
them have restraining orders on you."—Charles
Matthews, disability rights activist, Disabled and
Proud (Ottawa), letter to Michelle Dawson, Oct 14,
2004

90. The Auton
parent petitioners had several opportunities to object
to my application to intervene in Auton—this
application being the document containing my affidavit.
Both parties in Auton had the right to object to
or approve of any or all of the interveners. Both
parties objected to my intervention and recommended its
rejection. The parents objected on the grounds that it
would be superfluous. Their objection contains no
mention that there is "professional opinion" that I am a
fraud and have lied under oath. There is no demand that
I satisfy the parents, or the Court, that I am autistic.

91. The parents
could also have objected in the SCC hearing. Indeed,
they set aside part of their allotted time in order to
respond to my lawyer’s arguments. Their lawyer,
Christopher Hinkson, made no mention at all that I was
a fraud and had lied under oath, and that there was
"professional opinion" that I am not autistic.

92. Further, the
Auton parents have had free run of the media.
Anyone in the ABA parent faction and phalanx, or any
of their lawyers, could have at any time used this
privilege to reveal to the public that one of the SCC
interveners was a fraud, had lied under oath, and that
there was "professional opinion" that she was not
autistic.

93. The accusation
that autistics who disagree with ABA parents, in
Canada and elsewhere, are not really autistic, and do
not understand "real" autism, is so commonplace and
banal that the absence of this accusation from the
post-SCC-decision outcry would have been shocking. As
yet there is not one instance of autistics who agree
with the ABA parents being so accused.

94. Auton at
the SCC was well populated by interveners claiming to
represent autistics. ASC, for example, claimed to
represent all autistic Canadians. I made no such claim
in my application or written argument. Nor did my
lawyer in his oral argument. Dr Freeman’s inability to
distinguish between ASC and me does not argue for the
reliability of her observations.

95. ABA parents have
railed impressively against positions that I have
never taken, against statements I have never made, and
against actions I have never taken. This has also
happened to many other autistic activists who do not
agree with the ABA parents. We are still waiting to be
genuinely challenged. Instead we have been defamed and
disrespected in ways which are no more productive to
argue against than any other form of bigotry.

96. Charles Matthews
runs an Ottawa group called "Disabled and Proud" (not
to be confused with an American organization of the
same name) and is a self-designated leader of the
disability community in Canada. He is not autistic.
His response to my own brief inquiry about his support
for the ABA parents shows that being a fraud is not
all I have been accused of by the "autism community",
none of whom has restraining orders against me, or any
cause to have. Mr Matthews did not respond to a letter
from my lawyer.

97. Attempting to
silence an autistic by accusing her of having
restraining orders against her is like trying to
silence a gay man by accusing him of being a
pedophile: it deliberately exploits harmful
prejudicial stereotypes. This is how the autism and
disability communities encounter autistics who present
science-, ethics- and human rights-based challenges to
legal and political actions whose consequences we
cannot escape.

98. In fact, any
person who in any way opposes the ABA parents, or
publicly says or writes anything good about autistics
(unless this autistic is in an ABA/IBI program) in
Canada, can expect to get abusive and/or hate mail.
Non-autistics who have taken reasoned, fact-based
positions not entirely supportive of the ABA parents
have found themselves opening mail, in some cases a
lot of mail, containing the news that they are corrupt
or have been paid off, as well as more personal
insults and/or accusations that they are destroying
children.

99. The Canadian
disability community has largely supported the mission
and methods of the ABA parents and bestowed on them
tremendous sympathy as well as heroic martyr status.
I’m aware of one dissenting group which, because of
how the ABA parents respond to dissent, I’m not
prepared to name. And I know a few dissenting
individuals, prominent in the disability community,
who have not spoken out in public. Should they ever,
they will enjoy a barrage of insulting and threatening
mail, and/or public ridicule and vilification, all
from the same ABA parent faction and phalanx insisting
that unless autistic children acquire proper "social
skills" via "medically necessary" treatment, they are
doomed.

100. In theory, the
mission and methods of the disability community should
be at odds with the ABA parents. The ABA parents
pathologize, demonize and dehumanize disabled people.
They insist that the only way a disabled person can
stay out of institutions is to become non-disabled.
They market disabled people as an appalling burden on
non-disabled people, and state as scientific fact that
the only way to alleviate this burden, which threatens
to destroy the economy, is to make disabled people
non-disabled via extensive, if not perpetual, medical
treatment. In court, the ABA parents characterize
disabled people as "less than half living". Everywhere
in their work is the message that disabled lives are
not worth living. Only the non-disabled have real
lives and contribute to society. If a disabled person
makes any progress, or has any abilities at all, this
is always and only due to their "medically necessary"
treatment. Further, "progress" in a disabled person
always and only means "progress towards being normal".
And if a disabled person has achievements that cannot
be attributed to a "medically necessary" treatment,
then this person must not really be disabled, because,
as everyone knows, untreated disabled people just get
"worse and worse" and are not good for anything. The
ABA parents denounce as ridiculous the possibility of
disabled people having a say in their treatment,
because disabled people are inherently unqualified to
make decisions about themselves. It is ludicrous,
according to the ABA parents, that anyone would
consider being disabled a valid way to live; and it is
criminal to provide the kind of assistance which
allows disabled people to succeed as disabled people.
For the ABA parents, there is no such thing as a
successful disabled person.

101. The disability
community, which has extensively invested itself in Auton,
has lost its bearings in autism issues. They fail to
see us as human. They are condoning and encouraging
views of disabled people utterly poisonous to
themselves, because they believe these poisonous views
are simply true when applied to autistics. No leader
in the disability community, or any kind of leader,
would dare make or act on the above statements about
disabled people except after first
substituting "autistic" for "disabled".

H. "THIS TERRIBLE
AND LIFE-DESTROYING CONDITION""What do we do
when the worst nightmare comes true—the terrible
news of a diagnosis that our child has the dreaded
neurological disorder of autism. […] We can no
longer permit the calamity of autism to financially
destroy families stricken with this catastrophic
health problem. […] Parents of children with autism
face a stark choice in Canada: personal bankruptcy
or the loss of their suffering child to government’s
heartless game of healthcare roulette."—Conservative
MP Pierre Poilievre, Hill Times, March 21, 2005

Ms. Whitney:
I will tell you something. I believe that
discrimination and hate are learned behaviours.Senator Cochrane:Yes.Ms. Whitney:And
I will tell you that children with autism who
receive treatment before they enter school,
ideally at age 2, 50 per cent, almost 50 per cent
of those children will go on to become completely
indistinguishable from their peers. In other
words, with this treatment, there is a 47 per cent
recovery rate. Now, I know many people do not
believe in recovery when it comes to autism, but
let me tell you, I have seen these children with
my own eyes, and if I did not know better, I would
never be able to detect one trace of autism left
in their little bodies.Senator Cochrane:Isn’t
that
wonderful.—proceedings of the Standing
Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science, and
Technology, February 15, 2005

"The Charter
does not exist to promote these stereotypes and
prejudices by allowing equality, dignity, and
participation only to those who succeed in a
"medically necessary" treatment to eradicate their
differences and render them indistinguishable from
Canadians judged to be ‘normal’"—Factum of the
Intervener, Michelle Dawson, Auton
(Guardian ad litem of) v. British Columbia
(Attorney General), SCC File
No.: 29508

102. In Auton,
the ABA parents failed to obtain under the Charter
the unlimited funding for the "effective" medical
treatment they believe will allow them to have the
healthy normal children they want, versus the sick
autistic children they have.

103. Regardless of
this failure, the ABA parents have succeeded in
changing the lives of all autistics in Canada. The ABA
parents have largely succeeded in legally and
politically defining a neurological difference,
autism, as a treatable cancer-equivalent disease from
which otherwise normal or healthy, that is
non-autistic, people suffer. "Autistic" has been
defined as "sick"; "non-autistic" has been defined as
"healthy"; and an "effective" medical treatment is one
which restores a sick autistic person to a healthy
non-autistic condition.

104. Our rights as
autistic people have vanished as surely as the rights
of homosexuals would, should homosexuality be defined
as a cancer-equivalent treatable disease from which
otherwise normal or healthy, that is heterosexual,
people suffer.

105. This success on
the part of the ABA parents has been insufficient to
their needs. They want autism uniquely singled out and
identified in federal law as a disease for which
unlimited medical treatment, that is ABA/IBI, must be
funded. The only acceptable limit to this treatment is
that it may stop when the autistic is "recovered" and
therefore "indistinguishable" from non-autistics.
Either we do not recover, and stay in treatment
striving to recover; or we recover, and are no longer
autistic.

106. Again, the ABA
parents are succeeding. Autism is now singled out at
the federal level. Canada now has ABA MPs and ABA
Senators. We are, according to the ABA MP Mr
Poilievre, our own parents’ worst nightmare. That is,
there is nothing worse than having an autistic child.
We are uniquely appalling. Our parents uniquely suffer
more than any other parents. It is a "moral
imperative" to amend federal law to define all
autistic Canadians as diseased.

107. The ABA MPs
prominently include both Conservatives and New
Democrats. Conservatives Scott Reid and Chuck Strahl,
and the New Democrat Peter Stoffer have, in the House
of Commons, called autism a "terrible disease". At a
press conference, Mr Stoffer, who has given his office
space to the ABA parents, read a statement from
Canada’s interchangeable FEAT groups and autism
societies. He characterized autistics as "very ill"
and "afflicted", and the Auton SCC decision as
a "travesty".

108. It was Mr Reid
who called autism "this terrible and life-destroying
condition", in the House of Commons, where Canada’s
leaders sit. He also said that autism must be treated
via "life-changing" ABA/IBI, which only works if it is
done early. If parents don’t get ABA/IBI right away,
they "lose their child to autism." No one in the House
of Commons objected.

109. Any objection
would be inconceivable. In Canada, it has become
inconceivable, if not preposterous, that autistics
have value and dignity as autistic people. Here also,
the ABA parents have succeeded.

110. At the highest
political level, the ABA parents have succeeded in
turning the existence of any child with any autism
spectrum diagnosis into the most excruciating and
compelling family tragedy. They have cornered the
suffering market. No one is permitted to question
them. It would be unthinkable.

111. Whatever else
its consequences, Auton has been, and
post-SCC-decision continues to be, a real-time case
study in what happens when a society and its leaders
respond to people who are intrinsically and inherently
different by judging their differences to be
incompatible with humanity and therefore with
membership in this society.

112. History sadly
overflows with such case studies, in the areas of
race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, and ability.
This history, including Canadian history, duly records
the atrocities that ensue when extreme prejudices
about human difference become public policy.
Throughout human history, there exists a condition
that is genuinely "terrible and life-destroying". It
is the persistent hatred of human difference and the
great determination to wipe it out. Nothing has caused
more suffering or destroyed more lives.

I. THE INHERENT
DIGNITY OF OUR PERSONS"While
increasingly accepted, Applied Behavioural Analysis
(ABA) or Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI)
therapy is not uncontroversial. Objections range
from its reliance in its early years on crude and
arguably painful stimuli, to its goal of changing
the child’s mind and personality. Indeed one of the
interveners in this appeal, herself an autistic
person, argues against the therapy."—McLachlin
C.J. writing for the unanimous Court in Auton
(Guardian ad litem of) v. British Columbia (Attorney
General), 2004 SCC 78113. Auton is
by no means the ultimate Canadian ABA/IBI legal battle.
Many other cases are proceeding. Numerous legal
conflicts, most of them in Ontario, involve demands to
have unlimited ABA/IBI funded and provided for
school-aged children. A decision in Wynberg, the most
prominent of these cases, is imminent. ABA/IBI legal and
political battles will, for the foreseeable future,
continue and escalate. Non-autistics will continue to
quarrel over how to get rid of autism and who should pay
for this in which jurisdiction. The ABA parents will
continue to hold themselves above the law, and above the
science, and above scrutiny, and above criticism. They
will continue to be unable or unwilling to make their
case accurately and respectfully. Their governmental
opponents will continue their well-established refusal
to respond to this by making an accurate and respectful
case of their own.

114. Auton
is not ideal. The SCC decision, ideally, would have
censured the BC government which, like the ABA
parents, wrote off autistics. While the government’s
cursory and dismissive denigration of autistics pales
in comparison with the more extravagant and
comprehensive denigration by the parents, a government
is supposed to have a greater responsibility, and to
extend that responsibility to all citizens.

115. Auton
is also an anomaly. I predicted, shortly after the SCC
decision was handed down, that this decision would not
be respected in the lower courts and tribunals. This
prediction has so far largely been accurate. Both the
ABA parent faction and phalanx and the government side
in Auton responded to the SCC decision in ways
not encouraging of change, on either side, in how
autistics will be portrayed and treated. Indeed, the
ABA parents are leveraging the supposed horror of the
SCC decision in the same way they leverage the
supposed horror of their autistic children.

116. Auton
has a very different meaning for autistics and our
allies in Canada and elsewhere.

117. We know that
the Auton parents, accurately representing all
ABA parents and the "autism community", argued at
trial that being autistic violates our physical and
psychological integrity and the inherent dignity of
our persons. But we also know that neither the
demeaning views of autism deployed by both sides in Auton,
nor the explicit objections of both sides, succeeded
in preventing one of the untreated autistics whose
humanity and dignity was denied throughout the lower
court proceedings from intervening at the SCC. There
are rules and standards governing interventions at the
SCC, and we now know that these rules and standards
mean an untreated autistic who is denied participation
elsewhere in Canadian society, and particularly in the
"autism community", is welcomed to participate in this
one place, in the Supreme Court of Canada.

118. We know that
autistics who believe we have integrity and dignity
have been ostracized. We have been demeaned, banished,
and segregated by the Canadian "autism community"—by
those claiming to represent us. Our requests that we
be treated as equals have been rejected as outrageous.
But in Auton, a case involving crucial
decisions about the future of autistics in Canada, the
"autism community" was forced to watch while an
autistic was treated as fully human, and as an equal.
This had not happened to this community before, not
when anything important was at stake.

119. I don’t know
how much influence I had on the SCC decision. I do
know that if I had none at all, I would not have been
the only intervener mentioned. "Equality rights
advocates" have claimed that the Court tried to "hang"
their decision on me, as if I am some kind of victim.
I find this offensive. I would not have intervened
unless I were willing to take responsibility for
influencing the decision. Indeed, this is why I
intervened. The intervention was a success. Autistics
and our allies in Canada and around the world
experienced and expressed intense joy.

120. In a unanimous
decision written by the Chief Justice of the Highest
Court of the Land, the voice of an untreated autistic
was not only welcomed, but heard, and considered, and
noted. Whatever we may have to endure in the wake of
this fair and cautious decision, this singular
unprecedented victory is permanent, and cannot be
erased from us.

Notes and
sources:(Books, sources from
the science and major e-resources are fully described
under References; the Auton SCC documents,
which include the lower court decisions and all the
applications and factums of the interveners and the
Appellant’s Record index; and the SCC decision which
is here http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_scd.html
are overall sources and are not individually sourced;
multiple media sources are cited when reported views
were reported in many different places)

D.
Freeman from her summary of Auton, posted here http://www.featbc.org/cgi-local/forum/discus.cgi
; factum is here http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_fac.html56. The
mistaken witness is the behaviour analyst Glen Davies;
the star witness is Frank Gresham; the transcripts are
in Freeman (2003). 58.
Remarks about the Court being scared off, or kowtowing
to the governments, were ubiquitous; see all Globe and
Mail Nov 20 Auton articles; Fiona Sampson, lawyer for
LEAF/DAWN, emphasized the "fear-mongering" by
governments.59.
Threats that autistics will damage or destroy the
economy have been ubiquitous before and after the SCC
decision, in the media, in legal arguments, on
websites, etc.62. The
articles are Lovaas (1987) and McEachin et al (1993).
For the importance of aversives, see Epstein et al
(1985), Lovaas et al (1987), and Lovaas (1987) as well
as Dawson (2004).63. The
study is Smith et al (1997).66.
Lovaas opposed the medical or disease/illness model of
autism throughout his career, in favour of a
learning/behavioural model. For an article entirely
devoted to this theme, see Lovaas (1979). Letter to
the Globe and Mail was published Nov 22, 2004.

F. 82. NS
information from multiple media sources; information
re Quebec from Julie Quenneville, Political Consultant
for Philippe Couillard, Quebec Health Minster:
"scientifically proven" and training in four
institutions from email Nov 6, 2003, basing support
and promotion for ABA/IBI on the Canadian Coordinating
Office for Health Technology Assessment (CCOHTA)
report (2001, available from http://www.ccohta.ca
) from letter, Dec 2, 2003. "Enemy number one" is from
Freeman (2003).83. For
Quebec letter from Quenneville (Dec 2, 2003); for
Ontario letter from Minister of Children and Youth
Services Dr Maria Bountrogianni, Jan 11, 2005. Federal
government effort to prevent autism, see http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/tap_red.html
; cabinet minister see http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/25229.html
; other government actions (summary) see http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_pmc.html
; "very ill" and "afflicted" from statement on behalf
of FEAT groups and ASC member societies, including the
one represented by ASC President, Peter Zwack, by
Peter Stoffer at a press conference from the Centre
Block of the parliament buildings Feb 24, 2005.85. For
summary of the demands (and links to other sources),
see http://www.canadaautism.com/89.
Studies from and rationales for Lovaas’ "Feminine Boy
Project" at UCLA, see Rekers & Lovaas (1974),
Rekers et al (1974); Rekers et al (1977); for a
description see Dawson (2004).

Auton (2002-2004),
File Number 29508. In the Supreme Court of Canada (On
appeal from the British Columbia Court of Appeal)
between the Attorney General of British Columbia and
the Medical Services Commission of British Columbia,
Applicants (Appellants/Respondents on Cross-Appeal)
and Connor Auton et al, Respondents
(Respondents/Apellants on Cross-Appeal): applications
for leave to appeal and cross-appeal, responses, and
replies; applications for leave to intervene; factums
of the parties and interveners; index of the
Appellant’s Record.

Chance, P. (1974).
"After you hit a child, you can't just get up and
leave him; you are hooked to that kid": A conversation
with O. Ivar Lovaas about self-mutilating children and
why their parents make it worse. Psychology Today,
7, 76-84.

Choutka, C.M.,
Doloughty, P.T. and Zirkel, P.A. (2004). The "discrete
trials" of applied behavior analysis for children with
autism: Outcome-related factors in the case law. Journal
of Special Education 38, 95-104.